334) MASALA DOSA

MASALA DOSA

A SOUTH-INDIAN DREAM FOOD

Masala dosa with Green curry leaf chutney and Tomato chutney

Introduction:

          Masala dosas are created in several ways and varied tastes all over South India. Yet, all of them invariably bring forth that unique, mouthwatering aroma and that addictively enticing look which charms your nostalgic memories and makes you want to enjoy them forevermore. My dear children, who seem to have inherited my father’s gourmet palate, often pester me to make for them tummyfuls of my tastiest masala dosas. I happily share with you one of my finest masala dosa recipes. Do cook and enjoy!

Ingredients for the dosa batter:

     1)    Aged raw rice (see note) – 875 gm.

     2)    Parboiled Ponni rice – 125 gm.

     3)    Fenugreek seeds – 5 gm. (1 teaspoon)

     4)    Urud dal (split black gram lentils) – 250 gm.

     5)    Salt – 10 gm. (2 teaspoons)

Ingredients for the masala (filling):

     1)    Peeled potatoes – 750 gm.

     2)    Peeled beetroot – 250 gm.

     3)    Peeled carrot – 100 gm.

     4)    Stemless hot green chilies – 20 gm.

     5)    Peeled ginger – 7 gm.

     6)    Peeled onion – 150 gm.

     7)    Curry leaves – 2 sprigs

     8)    Cooking oil – 15 ml. (1 tablespoon)

     9)    Mustard seeds – 5 gm. (1 teaspoon)

     10)    Urud dal (split black gram lentils) – 10 gm. (2 teaspoons)

     11)    Garam masala powder – 2 gm. (½ teaspoon)

     12)    Kashmiri chili powder – 10 gm. (2 teaspoons)

     13)    Salt – 10 gm (2 teaspoons)

     14)    Water – 250 ml.

     15)    Coriander leaves of one plant (optional)

Ingredient for roasting the dosa:

     1)    Cooking oil to grease the pan (for cast-iron pan) or to sprinkle over the dosa as it starts to crisp (for non-stick pan) – 7.5 ml. (1 ½ teaspoons for each dosa)

To prepare the batter (make the batter today for masala dosas tomorrow):

          Soak the rice (both) and the fenugreek seeds together in water for 5 to 8 hours. Soak the urud dal (250 gm.) separately likewise.

          Rinse and drain the urud dal. Transfer to a wet grinder (for best results) and grind to superfine fluffy paste, adding water from time to time (when you feel the paste is getting too thick for the grinder). Take out the paste and put it in a large vessel (a 10 litre vessel would be ideal as you do not want the batter to overflow when it rises).

          Now rinse the soaked rice and the fenugreek in water, drain and transfer to the wet grinder. Grind likewise to superfine paste (The paste should not be too thick or too watery – if thick, the wet grinder will suffer, if watery, the dosa will. Dosa batter is just a shade thinner than cake batter).

          Transfer the paste to the same vessel. Cover with a lid and leave to rise overnight. Rinse the wet grinder with a little water and save the wash in a separate vessel.

          After resting overnight, the batter would have risen quite well. Take a look at the vessel in which you kept the milky water from washing the grinder. Gently tilt the vessel and drain off the clear water. Add the paste at the bottom to the dosa batter. Tip in the salt. Stir thoroughly, since the heavier rice paste tends to sink to the bottom. Set aside.

To make the masala:

          Dice the potatoes, the beetroot and the carrot roughly to chunks and put them in a pressure cooker. Pour in a cup (250 ml.) of water, put on the lid and set on high heat. As soon as you hear the first whistle, lower the heat and let cook for 10 minutes. Switch off the heat and let the cooker cool naturally (this provides enough time for the vegetables to cook to perfection).

          Meanwhile, chop the onion to superfine pieces and set aside. Chop the green chilies and the ginger together to superfine pieces and set aside. Pull the curry leaves off their sprigs and set aside.

          Check to see if the cooker is cool enough to open the lid (the steam should have subsided fully). If yes, transfer the contents to a mixing bowl and mash the vegetables with the bottom of a stainless steel glass. It is good to leave some small chunks for texture.

          Set a large cast-iron wok (for better taste) or frying pan on high heat. Pour in the cooking oil (15 ml.) and tip in the mustard seeds. As soon as the mustard seeds are about to finish spluttering, tip in the urud dal (10 gm.) and lower the heat. Stir till they turn a light brown in colour.

Throw in the chopped green chilies, the ginger and the curry leaves. Stir for a minute and tip in the powdered salt, the garam masala powder and the Kashmiri chili powder. Stir once. Now put in the mashed vegetables, turn up the heat and stir to mix thoroughly. As soon as the masala is hot, switch off the heat (if you are using coriander leaves to make the masala more aromatic, chop or break, add and stir once more).

To make the masala dosa:

          Set a flat cast-iron pan or a non-stick pan on high heat. Use a ladle (which can hold 150 ml. of batter) to stir the batter thoroughly. If you are using a cast-iron pan, grease it with 1½ teaspoons (7.5 ml.) of cooking oil as soon as it is hot. If you are using a non-stick pan, greasing has to be avoided since the batter will refuse to stick to the pan to form the dosa.

          Pour a ladleful of batter in the center of the pan. Put the bottom of the ladle at the center and softly spread the batter in continuous, ever-widening circles till you get a perfect round dosa.

Cover with a cloche and lower the heat. A minute later, lift off the cloche. If you are using a non-stick wok, just sprinkle 1½ teaspoons (7.5 ml.) of cooking oil over the dosa. Let the dosa roast slowly. Soon, you can see golden spots appearing here and there on the dosa. Use a spoon to spread some masala in a line across the length of the dosa. Use a flat showel headed trowel or spatula to fold either side of the dosa over the masala.

          Lift up the masala dosa and serve hot with green curry leaf chutney or coconut chutney or ekpanni chutney or with tomato chutney and sambar or okra sambar. Eat crispy hot masala dosas, dipping pieces in sambar and different chutneys one after the other as my kids do!

Masala dosa with Kappa bonda and Ekpanni chutney

Enjoy!!!

Note:

          New rice from freshly harvested paddy is a translucent white in appearance and tends to be too sticky or gooey for the dosa. So it would be better to buy aged raw rice which is opaque and slightly cream in colour to get the perfect dosa. B.T. rice (Bombay Terminus rice) gives excellent results.

105) NENDRAN BANANA CHIPS

NENDRAN BANANA CHIPS

Introduction:

Do you know what kind of snack packets you are most likely to find in the bags of Malayalees travelling abroad to meet their relatives or friends? Nendran banana chips, of course. Nendran is a type of banana cultivated in Kerala. Perhaps the tastiest of all bananas, Nendran has in fact been the staple fruit and vegetable of Malayalees from ancient times. Almost every portion of the Nendran plant is used by Keralites. The fruit, the flower pod and the pith can transform to wonderful lip smacking dishes. The leaf is used to serve meals on and to wrap fish and other dishes for steaming, roasting or packing. The stem is used as mulch and also as a source of fibre to make handicrafts when dry. The dry leaf stems are used as rope. Fresh leaf stem pieces are used to brush on cooking oil to grease pans. The uses of Nendran indeed seem endless. The recipes too are many. Nendran banana chips are so delicious that even toothless old people can be seen pounding the chips to powder and gobbling it up with a big smile.

Ingredients:

     1)    Fully mature unripe Nendran banana – 1 or 2 combs

     2)    Salt – 1 tablespoon

     3)    Best quality coconut oil – 1.5 litres (to deep fry)

     4)    Water – 150 ml.

To Make:

          Peel the bananas with a small sharp knife. The peel is around half a centimetre thick. Cut off both the sharp ends of the banana. Now make a skin deep gash down the length of the banana. Insert the tip of your knife into the gash. Twist and slowly pry off the skin. Do not throw away the banana peel. You can make many delicious dishes out of it (banana peel upkari recipe follows). Peel the rest of the bananas and set aside.

          If the resin from the peel sticks to your fingers, just rub in a few drops of coconut oil. In a small mug, put in a tablespoonful of salt. Pour in 150 ml. of water and stir well until it dissolves fully. Set a large wok on high heat. Pour in the coconut oil.

          As soon as the oil is hot, you can start making the chips. Holding a stainless steel chip maker above the hot oil with one hand, grip the banana firmly and push it back and forth quickly and carefully across the slicing board letting the chips drop into the hot oil. As you reach the end of the banana, take care not to slice your fingers. Once you get the hang of it, it is quite safe and easy. Slice in around one banana or a banana and a half for the first batch. Stir frequently to fry all the chips evenly and to prevent them from sticking together.

          As the chips get fried, you will notice the bubbles getting lesser. Now tip in a teaspoonful and a quarter of the prepared brine. Stir well. You can hear the frothy roar of the brine as the water evaporates, depositing the salt evenly on the chips. As soon as the bubbles coming out of the chips become very less, lower the heat to minimum and quickly lift out the chips with a strainer or a wide perforated ladle. Drain off the excess oil and put them in a stainless steel container with the lid open to cool.

          Now slice in the second batch of chips and turn up the heat. There will be some residual salt in the oil. So you will need to put in only one teaspoonful of brine for each of the later batches. It is important to put on the lid of the container only after the chips have cooled down to room temperature so that they will remain crisp for up to a month. You will definitely love these chips.

Chip Maker

Notes:

     1)    For the chips to be crunchy and crispy, it is important that you

     a)    use only fully mature unripe Nendran banana

     b)    fry them on high heat

     c)     salt them only at a later stage in the frying process

     d)    lift them out when fully fried i.e. When the bubbles become less, yet early enough not to let the residual heat burn them

     e)    fully drain off the excess oil

     f)      cover the container with lid only after the chips cool down to room temperature

     g)    remember to turn down the heat as you lift them out of the wok and again to turn up the heat as soon as the new batch of chips are in the oil and

     h)    never overheat the oil or let it smoke.

     2)    For getting sweet and sour Nendran chips, use quarter ripe bananas (where the smoked bananas are just a little soft but the skin is still green). Fully ripe Nendran bananas have golden yellow skin and are not good for chips.

     3)    Commercial Nendran banana chip makers slice up hundreds of bananas and pre-treat the raw chips for an hour or so in a solution of water, salt and yellow food colour before deep frying them in huge (1 metre diametre) woks over smouldering coconut husk burning clay ovens.

     4)    Some roasted oils (not all) tend to froth so much as to spill over. It is good to test the oil with a small sample. It is also better to use a larger wok.

     5)    If you find the heat of the oil and the ensuing steam too much to bear, you can slice the chips into a basin of water (to prevent them from sticking together) and later drain and slip them into the wok. This way, you can fry the chips with greater ease but the flavour, crispiness and the nutrients will be comparatively lesser.

13) MULAKAPODI

MULAKAPODI

A DRY CHUTNEY POWDER

Ingredients:

     1)    Shelled black gram lentils (urud dal) – 500 gm.

     2)    Dry red chilies – 15 Nos.

     3)    Green chilies – 5 Nos.

     4)    Citrus leaves – 4 Nos.

     5)    Curry leaves – 2 sprigs

     6)    Asafoetida powder – ½ tea spoon

     7)    Salt – 3 ½ tea spoons

To Make:

          Chop the green chilies, citrus leaves and curry leaves to super fine pieces and set aside. In a thick pan, on low heat, roast the lentils, dry red chilies, asafoetida powder and salt. Stir occasionally until the lentils turn light brown (roasted half way). Tip in the chopped chilies and leaves and stir continuously until the chilies and leaves are crisp and the lentils golden brown. Turn off the heat and leave open till it cools down naturally.

          When cool, put the roast into a dry mixer and grind to fine powder. Your mulakapodi is now ready. Enjoy with idlis, uthappams and dosas (recipes given separately).

          South Indians prefer to pour a little coconut oil while plating up, which is combined and used as a spicy dipping sauce.

Notes:

     1)    Select your chilies (low heat, medium hot or hot) to suit your taste.

     2)    When stored in dry glass jars and only dry spoons are used, your mulakapodi has a shelf life of over 1 year at room temperature.

     3)    You can use leaves of almost any citrus plant such as lemon, pomello, kaffir lime or market lime. If the leaves are small, take 8 to 10 numbers.

12) COCONUT CHUTNEY

COCONUT CHUTNEY
A SIMPLE DIPPING CURRY

Ingredients:

     1)    Medium tender coconut – ½

     2)    Hot green chili – 1 No. (If medium hot, 2 Nos.)

     3)    Tender ginger – 1 inch piece

     4)    Curry leaves – 3 sprigs

     5)    Kashmiri dry red chili – 2 Nos.

     6)    Coconut oil – 1 table spoon

     7)    Mustard seeds – 1 tea spoon

     8)    Urud dal (shelled black gram lentils) – 1 tea spoon

     9)    Lime or lemon juice – 5 ml. (Optional)

     10)     Salt to taste

To Cook:

          Grate the coconut. Peel and chop the ginger finely. Put the grated coconut, ginger and green chili into the mixer grinder. Pluck the curry leaves from 2 of the sprigs and add. Grind to fine paste.

          If you prefer dry chutney, there is no need to add water. If you love gravy chutney, pour in 150 ml. water before grinding. Transfer to bowl.

          Pour 1 table spoon of coconut oil in a small pan and set on the stove on low heat. Tip in the mustard seeds. As soon as they start to finish spluttering, throw in the urud dal (black gram lentils). When the dal turns golden brown, put in the Kashmiri chili and the remaining leaves from the third sprig of curry leaves.

          Turn off the stove and quickly add the contents of the pan to the coconut paste. Add the lemon juice (Optional) and stir. Taste and adjust the seasoning if required.

          You can enjoy coconut chutney as a welcome accompaniment to idlis, dosas and uthappams (recipes given separately).

Coconut chutney with dosa